Thank You
by M2 Zero
Summary: Cream was a polite girl. She said please, and you're welcome; and she always said "Thank you"...


Cream was a polite girl. She said please, and you're welcome; she held open doors for hours if she felt the need, and she was quiet and considerate; she knew how to sit and how to set a table and had been a hostess hopeful ever since the first time she had held a tea party with the Chaotix. And she always said "Thank you". Her life was easily marked with this gratefulness to others.

Her first words were "thank you," when her mom had picked her up to carry her during a long walk. "Thank you" when she went to visit the chao gardens, and lots of "thank you"s when she came home with a large blue-and-yellow egg. A teary "thank you" the first time her new chao, Cheese, re-hatched after death. "Thank you"s for Charmy when he listened to her quiet, restrained rants. A "thank you" to her dad when he came to visit, and a quiet and morose "thank you" when he left soon afterwords.

"Thank you" to Big, when he showed her how to fish, and again when he volunteered as a personal swim coach after she had nearly drowned. A "thank you" when she had become one of the best swimmers in the group, losing her brief fear of water permanently. A "thank you" to Sonic every time he saved her, and her mother, and her chao, and sometimes her friends. A "thank you" to Blaze for trusting her.

A "thank you" to Amy when she had chased off a pack of leery dogs with her hammer after Cream had started to look like a teenager and grow into the double-digits. A "thank you" to Vector for comforting her mom, and a resounding "thank you" to everyone involved when he became her new dad. A "thank you" to Espio for checking her grades and permanent records when she started worrying about her chances of getting into her chosen university. A "thank you" to Tails for helping her with her homework late into the night.

A hoard of tearful "thank you"s followed her as she moved out, waving to her parents until the train for the Mystic Ruins was gone, out of sight. A "thank you" to her friends for helping her build her house and move in. A "thank you" every day for every time they came over to visit, the sheer number of people causing the tree house floor to creak dangerously and inspire the group to build a ground floor.

A "thank you" to her friends every time they invited her to come along for an adventure. A "thank you" to Marine for using her powers to save Cream from the first waters in a long time she had been unable to swim, to which her less-polite counterpart laughed before showing her the finer points of boating. A "thank you" to Silver when he finally explained to her everything that had happened to him, all of the strange time travel and lost memories; and a "thank you" in return when, finally, he reunited with his first, best friend.

When Mephiles appeared again after his long-past disappearance, she gave him a "thank you" and a hug for coming to her, and for telling her about what he was going to do and what was going to happen to him. She offered a quiet "thank you" to his vague warnings before he left for his own death, but felt ashamed to admit that she didn't believe them, and so when Sonic came to her with the offer of another adventure, she accepted with a simple "thank you."

When her mom's chao, met long ago and long since reformed from a darker past, offered to come along, she offered him a "thank you". When she was given two of the Chaos emeralds, light blue and white for the chao accompanying her, she offered a "thank you", while the chao transformed into their chaos-powered forms; an elegant reindeer bearing a red ribbon, and an almost organic-looking version of Metal Sonic. With every time one of her friends saved her from a brush with death, "thank you". As she told Metal to go ahead, because the others needed him, he departed with a "thank you".

Her first words.

She trailed behind. She had never been all that fast.

She heard the others scream as the shot struck true. She watched in shock as a shower of blood exploded from her chest. She fell onto the ground, angled herself as she fell; she hit her side, hard, and rolled onto her back. She saw a blue sphere rocket above her, and her head was filled with a confused vision of the special zone. It wasn't a blue sphere, because they didn't tear through robots, and they didn't run over and look down at her in horror with Sonic's face.

"Mr. The Hedgehog?" Cream asked blearily, and suddenly she was six years old again, rescued from a robot, running to save her mother, carefree.

"Oh god," the hedgehog whispered, green eyes fearful. "Oh god! Cream, hold on-" he looked up, turning his head wildly before settling on a certain direction. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. "Guys! Help!" Cream choked, coughed; red trailed from her mouth and nose. Her eyes were locked above her. She heard footsteps, and suddenly everyone was crowding around, shouting. She blinked. A familiar white head hovered above her, a reindeer with a red ribbon around his neck, a blue glow in his mouth.

"Cheese," she said weakly, her chest creaking with the effort.

"Cream," the reindeer said, and then suddenly he was back to being a chao, an angel chao that had evolved long ago, a red ribbon around his neck and the light blue emerald in his small paws. He crawled onto Cream's chest, and she struggled to lift her head up, not wanting to let the chao out of her sight. He sat on top of her wound, his white fur staining red. She saw Amy, Big and Metal standing by her amongst the crowd. Tails and Charmy and everyone was crowding around her, in the corner of her consciousness. The three of them looked at her sadly; she wondered if they were crying, and realized that she couldn't tell. Everything was becoming blurry and indistinct. She looked at her chao, the only clear thing.

"I'm dying."

Cheese looked at her, and lay across her chest.

"Not alone."

The chaos chao closed his eyes, and on his command started to be surrounded by a transparent shell. A pale gray. Cream shakily raised a hand, setting it on the translucent shell. She layed her head back and closed her eyes.

"Thank you."

They died, chao and rabbit, together.


End file.
